![[LLM image generated by President Trump's staff or a supporter and shared by President on Truth Social reading "Apocalypse Now" and President Trump in the role of antagonist Bill Kilgore]](https://outsidethebeltway.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-06-132151.avif)
As James has covered in two posts, and Steven has also commented on, this week, President Trump renamed the “Department of Defense” to the “Department of War.” Part of his rationale was to return us to the days when the military did what it took to win foreign wars.
“So we won the First World War. We won the Second World War. We won everything before that and in between and then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to Department of Defense. So we’re going Department of War. … I think it’s a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now.
We should have won every war we could have won every war. But we really chose to be a very politically correct, or wokie, and we just fight forever. And then we’d, you know, win or lose — we wouldn’t lose, really. We just fight to sort of tie. We never wanted to win — wars that every one of them we would have won easily with just a couple of little changes or a couple of little edicts.”
[source: Official Transcript]
[Update 3/7]
I just discovered that during that session our Secretary of Defense also made this ominous statement about our military:
Pete Hegseth: Mr. President, the War Department is going to fight decisively, not endless conflicts. It’s going to fight to win, not, not to lose. We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense, maximum lethality, not tepid legality; violent effect, not politically correct. We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders.
[source: Official Transcript]
[/update]
Separately this week, Trump indicated that he and his team are in the planning process of deploying the National Guard to three cities: Baltimore, Chicago, and New Orleans. The impactice, according to official comments, was over the issue of crime:
With US troops patrolling Washington, DC, after a similar National Guard deployment in June to Los Angeles, President Donald Trump is ramping up his rhetoric against predominantly Democratic cities, with a direct target on the nation’s third-most populous.
“Chicago is the worst and most dangerous city in the World, by far,” Trump said with typical hyperbole Tuesday morning on Truth Social. “(Gov. JB) Pritzker needs help badly, he just doesn’t know it yet. I will solve the crime problem fast, just like I did in DC.”
“We’re going,” the president hours later told a reporter about sending in the National Guard. “I didn’t say when. We’re going in.” […]
But the Trump administration hasn’t committed to any specifics on the date. Vice President JD Vance told reporters Wednesday there are “no immediate plans” to deploy to Chicago, while Trump said Tuesday the administration was “going in” without specifying a timetable, muddying the waters on if and when a potential deployment would occur.
Beyond what’s said directly to the press, we know that President Trump also utilizes social media to make statements. And this morning, on his personal social media platform, Truth Social, the President dropped the following meme:
Sure, the goal here is first and foremost to “own” the libs (and make news). It’s going to be successful at that as it’s already getting a lot of coverage (something I’m contributing to). In fact, I’m sure our “anti-anti-Trump” readers are shaking their heads at this post and thinking you’re just giving him the attention he wants.
However, it’s now a fact that the President and his administration are increasingly communicating through memes. For example, the White House and top Government agencies regularly post “own the libs” memes on X/itter and other platforms. So, like it or not, we need to take what they are communicating seriously. Their intentional and unintentional elements provide insight into how the President and others in his administration are thinking about policy.
This “Chipocalypse Now” one is an excellent example of how the Administration’s “official” rhetoric and rationales can be reinforced and contradicted by “unofficially official” meme messaging. Here are some of the things I see:
- Chipocalypse Now is a reference to the classic Vietnam War movie Apocalypse Now (an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness).* Vietnam is, of course, one of those wars that Trump thinks we lost because we chose to be “politically correct” (we’ll get back to that). Celebrating a movie about a war we ultimately “lost” is an example of a “muddled” message.
- Some might think referencing Apocalypse Now is a self-own because many consider it an anti-war movie. The film’s creator, Francis Ford Coppola, definitely doesn’t see his movie that way: “No one wants to make a pro-war film; everyone wants to make an anti-war film. But an anti-war film, I always thought, should be like [Kon Ichikawa’s 1956 post-Second World War drama] The Burmese Harp – something filled with love and peace and tranquillity and happiness. It shouldn’t have sequences of violence that inspire a lust for violence. Apocalypse Now has stirring scenes of helicopters attacking innocent people. That’s not anti-war. […] An anti-war film cannot glorify war, and Apocalypse Now arguably does. Certain sequences have been used to rev up people to be warlike.” It’s safe to say that if the President has seen Apocalypse Now, his interpretation probably falls into that second camp.
- The iconography of President Trump as Lieutenant Colonel “Bill” Kilgore suggests a lot about Trump’s perspective on the “political correctness” that lost Vietnam. Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall, is the character who famously announces, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” It’s part of a raid sequence in which Kilgore orders “a napalm sortie on the local cadres. He and his men then proceed to mercilessly kill, shoot, and blow up numerous innocent civilians, showing a complete and utter disregard for civilian and human life.” (source) By placing himself in this particular role (arguably the most bloodthirsty character in the film), Trump is signalling complete alignment with Kilgore’s ideas and actions. Apparently, the opposite of political correctness in War is indiscriminate use of weapons like Napalm and the slaughter of clear non-combatants.
- It’s also worth calling out that all of Kilgore’s actions (and the other military actions in Apocalypse Now), beyond killing anyone he saw as an enemy, were also focused on destroying villages and often civil infrastructure. That’s part of the famous quote: “You know, one time, we had a hill bombed for twelve hours. When it was all clear, I walked up. We didn’t find one of them, not one stinking dink body. But the smell, you know, that gasoline smell. The whole hill… it smelled like… victory.” Here we have the President implying that he’s bringing that wanton destruction to an American City.
- Trump has changed the famous quote to “I love the smell of deportations in the morning…” Again, anti-anti-Trump readers may think: “See, this isn’t about napalming Chicago, it’s about immigration enforcement.” However, as noted above, the pretext for these deployments of the national guard has always been publicly about crime, not immigration. Again, Trump himself said: “Chicago is the worst and most dangerous city in the World, by far […] I will solve the crime problem fast, just like I did in DC.“
- While some people might argue that arresting undocumented folks is how you reduce crime, we know from the Administration’s own data that the majority of the people they have arrested have either no criminal record or have been arrested for minor criminal violations.
- We also see the meme explicitly reinforce Trump’s radical idea that internal immigration enforcement (a policing matter for the majority of this nation’s history) is an important function of the US Department of War. This blurring of the lines between police and military is a well-accepted sign of authoritarianism.
- [Update 3/7] This blurring of the lines between military and police is especially scary when the Secretary of Defense is stating that we don’t want our military bound by the law. Again: “Pete Hegseth: We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense, maximum lethality, not tepid legality; violent effect, not politically correct. We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders.”
Again, I’m sure that some readers are eye-rolling at this and almost feel motivated to register to tell me how wrong I am. FWIW, I’m interested in that feedback, so long as it’s focused on the points I raised and arguments I made.
I just hope that the majority of readers share my concern that in dropping this “hot” meme, the President is signalling that he endorses having the Department of War invade an American City, not get caught up in “politically correct” things like rule of law and policing procedure, all to advance his real agenda of arresting anyone suspected to be in the United States illegally (most of whom, once charged, will most likely be denied their due process as well).
By his own proclamation, the goal of the Department of War is to wage war on our enemies.
If these deployments happen, that means one of the Department of War’s first major engagements will be waging war within the United States on members of our own populace, with the Commander-in-Chief signalling a Kilgore-esque approach.
I realize that there’s also a type of reader who will react to this and think that while I have some points, I’m engaging in hyperbole. Likewise, they might say that the recent deployments haven’t involved any “Apocalypse Now”-level military violence. In other words, stop catastrophizing and being the “Boy Who Cried Wolf!**”
All I can respond with is that before January 25th, 2025, many people thought those who said “Once in office, President Trump will invent rationales to deploy American Troops to cities” were catastrophizing. After all, that didn’t happen in his first term. And I’ll also point out that those of us making those predictions were doing so because of the clear signals that the President and his transition committee were making. We ignore the current signals they are sending at our own peril.
* – Matt true life story: In Jr High, we went on a school trip where we stayed overnight in a motel. I didn’t have cable at home and had not (to my knowledge) ever seen an R-rated movie. The three other boys and I in the room were really excited about seeing an “adult movie” on HBO. In a case of life imitating the Simpsons, the R-rated movie that night was Apocalypse Now. I’m not sure if we chanted the title while waiting for it to start, but given our excitement, it wouldn’t surprise me if we did.
** – I have a post brewing about why the “don’t be the boy who cried wolf” criticism doesn’t work for our present moment (or rather misses a critical point of the fable).
